Simplon.co

Simplon.co is a pioneering social enterprise that offers tuition-free courses on coding and web development for underprivileged people, distanced from employment in the digital sector (dropouts, long-term unemployed, women, refugees, etc.) ; this propels diversity in the IT sector, as well as social mobility through the useful technical qualifications.

Digital illiteracy and the lack of accessibility to the trainings in Web Development create a gap in the diversity of the workers in the digital sector, even though there is an increasing demand of qualified technicians (about 900.000 positions in the digital sector are bound to be vacants in the EU by 2020).

On the other hand, youth unemployment reaches record level in France, particularly in high-priority neighborhoods where it stands at 45%, fuelled by a high rate of dropouts, misorientation, and lack of investments in these areas.

Our vocational training for technical jobs are aimed at populations who are distanced from the labour market and un-represented in the digital industry. Since 2013, Simplon trained over 1,000 people, and rose awareness on coding and the digital culture to 30,000 kids and teenagers. 6-month after the Web Development course, 83% of students have found a job in IT, even though 58% of them didn’t graduated from high-school. Whereas one-fifth of IT workers and 6% of developers are women, 31% of Simplon’s students are female, so as to mitigate the gender gap in the tech industry.

Our target audiences are :

• NEETs, young persons who are “Not in Education, Employment, or Training” ;

• Unemployed workers and people with little or no qualification ;

• Women who are the subjects of negative stereotypes in this industry ;

• Refugees, to help their integration into French society;

• Rural areas and provinces inhabitants, with little to no access to IT courses.

We created specific programs for each of these categories, with tailor-made features that covers their needs (short digital Acculturation trainings for NEETs, meetings with female developers for women, french class for refugees, training centers in all of France, etc.)

Track enrolments in our training centers - 1000 person trained each year

Track attendance and participation to our coding initiation workshops - 40,000 young people sensitized to digital culture

Send surveys to students and alumni to check their situation - 75% return to employment 6 months post-training

Our Teaching Method is holistic, agile and based on P2P pedagogy, as our courses involve Learning by doing, Peer programming, Test-driven and project-oriented training, and a strong focus on inspiring a collaborative and entrepreneurial mindset among our students. As an impact-driven social enterprise, Simplon also innovate so as to find new solutions to release the potential of young NEETs : digital inclusion is at the core of its mission, through gratuity and a sourcing process that select those who are the most in need of a boost.

At Simplon, we believe anyone can be a web developer, regardless of their background, origin, age or gender. Everyone with the motivation and a team-oriented attitude is welcome, and is taken care of, as every student is followed and assisted in his journey toward employment, through individual educational support, assistance in the job searching and help from his classmates.

Rather than using online education and MOOCs, which are inefficient for a population that lost its faith in traditional education and need to relearn how to learn, our pedagogical strategy is spearheaded by skilled teachers who conducts interactive and cooperative classes.

Our courses are tuition-free, so as to guarantee the inclusiveness of the training, and our network of partners (local associations and media, job agencies) help us inform the candidates on the courses. By regularly opening new training centers, Simplon reaches proactively for new underprivileged audiences, in disadvantaged suburban and rural areas.

Given that there is no technical prerequisite to apply to a course in Web Development at Simplon, anyone with basic computer skills and a strong motivation can be a Simplon student, after they pass the rigorous selection process.

Since our courses are free-of-charge, we seek continuously new partners to sponsor and support our activities: corporate and philanthropic foundations, digital companies, public organizations, etc. Simplon also got a social web agency (Simplon.Prod), that employs former students and develop digital solutions for non-profit organizations and associations, and we offer a wide range of special trainings for career-changing employees and corporate innovation.

Also, the French Job Agency (Pôle Emploi) and training organizations sponsors part of the training cost of unemployed people, who represent 76% of our students.

Financing : A potential lack of financial contributions from our partners can be detrimental to expanding our activities, particularly to our ongoing process of innovative projects development that seek to improve and extend our impact. Adaptability : Our model can be difficult to implement in some foreign countries where digital illiteracy is hard to tackle. Mitigation : We try to build lasting collaborations with the partner organizations that support our operations which know the local digital and entrepreneurial sector, by engaging their employees in our student’s education (mentoring, coding workshops), and hosting events to mobilize our network.

http://simplon.co/

Simplon.co evolved deeply throughout its 4 years of existence thanks to a bold expansion strategy, and the determination to always pursue an enhanced impact. We seek new challenges with a renewed enthusiasm to guide more young people towards achieving their dreams. Hence, by teaming up with renowned professionals in education, IT, and social businesses, we aspire to meet people who can help us reach our goals and implement our activities in new countries, though their connections and expertise in IT training ecosystems. In return, we would be able to share our vision and methods among the Solvers community.

Accenture

Ashoka

French Ministry of Economy

EPIC Foundation

Orange

Microsoft

Free-of-charge IT bootcamps : CoderDojo